The United States emerged at the end of World War II as the leading world power, then after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the USSR as a "superpower", according to Hubert Védrine. Robert Dahl defines power as the ability to do to others what they would not do otherwise: in the 1990s the United States was the so called absolute hegemony in the world allowing them to impose their views on the rest of the world. America's climb to the acme of its power was synonymous with the advent of globalization, a phenomenon which slowly gained momentum following the collapse of the USSR. This globalization is defined by the F.M.I. in its annual publication ?The World Economic Outlook' as the "growing economic interdependence of all countries, caused by the increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions in goods and services, as well as international capital flows and [] the accelerated diffusion of technology."

The rise of America as a super entity, combined with the globalization of trade, has led the concept of American power and globalization to be confused with each other; as a result of their power, the U.S. dominated globalization. Today, the terms globalization and Americanization are almost always appear together in the economic and cultural development context.

To what extent is globalization really a process of Americanization? American supremacy allows it to disseminate its model by the channels of globalization.

The United States is characterized by a kind of imperialism they consider a unique model of liberal democracy, values such as universalization. But U.S. imperialism is of a new type: it is no longer territorial, and occurs without physical violence. This new imperialism therefore requires the establishment of a soft power which is defined as the ability of a political actor to indirectly influence the behavior of another actor or the definition by the other player in its own interests through non-coercive means (structural, cultural or ideological).

To establish their economic, political and cultural power, the United States thus became the masters of soft power by spreading their model around the world, through the channels of globalization. Its actors are multiple and transnational.

Transnational corporations are probably the main actors in the diffusion of American culture which continues to be internationalized. A transnational company as defined in the UN can be any company with at least one unit of production abroad, albeit in the automobile, petroleum, finance, communication industries. Their importance is measured by direct investment abroad or FDI, which were multiplied by 70 in thirty years (from $27 billion in 1977 to $1,833 billion in 2007). Looking at the figures of FDI, we find that the most powerful US multinationals are mainly spread across Europe and Asia.

American transnational firms therefore have a major economic influence, and thus play a role in globalization because of their international character. Indeed, they allow the diffusion of American social and cultural model abroad through the dissemination of accounting, managerial, social, or environmental standards.